‘West siding with Ukraine neo-Nazis may backfire with extremism in Europe’

Western validation and support of neo-Nazism in Ukraine may backfire with right extremism rising in Europe, political commentator Aleksandr Nekrassov told RT. He says threats of sanctions against Russia will not work, partly because China opposes it.

RT:Now that Russia's blocked the UN
resolution, what do you see as the next step from the West?

Aleksandr Nekrassov: Well of course the west has
expected that Russia would veto the resolution on the Crimea
referendum. Now we are going to see the West monitoring carefully
the referendum in Cream and trying to find any reason to claim
this is not legal referendum that the rules have been broken,
that people could not vote and so on and so on. And that will
continue for some time. Obviously the West will not accept the
results of the referendum, even if 90 percent of the voters vote
for becoming a part of Russia. And Kiev obviously, the interim
regime in Kiev, will not accept the referendum as well. And then
will come the talks of sanctions and that is where the West is
very weak, because it does not really know what to do and it’s
not united. And the West by the way, an important point as well,
was quite upset by the way China took a position which they claim
initially, that it was an anti-Russian position, when it
absented. But actually it is not. China has been supporting
Russia. Official statements coming from the China media point to
the fact that the Chinese government is supportive of Russia,
does not approve of any economic sanctions. And I even read one
of the official comments that said that the West by meddling in
affairs of the Ukraine discredited itself.

RT:Western countries call the upcoming
referendum unconstitutional. Do they have a point?

AN: The Western countries are saying that the
referendum is unconstitutional but of course this is just a war
of words and political posturing, because this is the will of the
people. This is not something that Russia has imposed on Crimea.
Actually the people of Crimea have asked Russia to support them,
to help them, and it was their decision. So any talk by the
Americans and other Western countries that this referendum is
illegal, basically does not hold water and the future of Crimea
will be decided by its people, not by president Barack Obama or
some officials in London, or even Brussels, or the UN. So it is
up to them to decide what status the peninsula should have.

RT:The US and EU have warned of sanctions
against Russia, if the referendum goes ahead... But would that
achieve anything?

AN: The problem with sanctions that the US and
some of its allies are talking about is that the West can’t
really afford to introduce drastic sanctions against Russia
because they will damage themselves as well. There is no united
front. They pretend, some of the Western leaders that they are
united on the question of sanctions but they are not. Germany is
very reluctant to do anything dramatic, Britain is very reluctant
to do it as well, Italy, Spain – no- America has basically found
itself alone. It is making one diplomatic mistake after another
and I think really what we are witnessing is that America has
misjudged dramatically the effects of what has happened in Kiev,
and misjudged the response coming from Russia. I think they are
now in a very week position and all these calls to punish Russia
and say that it is isolated, they are not really reaching anyone.

RT:There's been a complete breakdown of law
and order, and military arsenals have been looted.... This is
right in the EU's backyard, shouldn't Europe be worried about
this?

AN: I think the W. European generally should
worry about the situation getting out of control across the
Ukraine. And the feeling is at the moment that the Crimea is the
only stable part of Ukraine because we see so much violence
everywhere. We see that the Kiev regime does not really have any
influence in most of the areas in Ukraine. And what is even more
appalling, and that has been picked up in most of the Western
European countries is that America and some of the Western
nations are actually siding with neo-Nazis and racists and
anti-Semites. And I think this this is not going to go down well
among the Western public. And I actually believe that the rise of
neo-fascist, neo-Nazi in Ukraine will trigger the same effect in
some of the Western countries, Western Europe. And I think the
Western public is very concerned with what is going on.

RT:The US and EU have threatened
'consequences' for Russia, if Sunday's referendum takes place...
But can Russia prevent it from happening if it doesn't control
Crimea?

AN: I don’t think that all these warnings to
Russia of consequences and costs, I don’t think the West really
believes in what it says because it has got more to lose than to
gain by introducing any serious sanctions against Russia. And I
think that in a sense they understand that President Putin knows
this. They also know perfectly well that China is not supportive
of this intervention, this meddling into the affairs of Ukraine
that China is totally against any sort of economic sanctions. And
I think this is why the propaganda in the US is trying to portray
China’s abstention from the vote as – oh, China is critical of
Russia- no it is not. China is not critical of Russia and I think
they are quite upset with what happened at the Security Council.